Marathon bombing prompts police to carry tourniquets

Apr. 17, 2014
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MIT police pallbearers carry the casket of fallen MIT officer Sean Collier during a memorial service on the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass., on April 24, 2013. Collier was fatally shot on campus April 18, 2013. / Dominick Reuter, AP

by Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

by Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON - The Boston Marathon bombings and the carnage caused by a steady stream of active shooter incidents across the country have prompted the addition of another piece of everyday equipment for thousands of cops: tourniquets.

Boston police officers received the first of 1,500 tourniquets and got training within a month after the coordinated attacks killed three and wounded more than 260 others, many of whom were treated with makeshift devices to control massive blood loss.

"Anybody could see there was just this enormous need,'' former Boston Police commissioner Ed Davis said, recalling frantic scenes in the moments after the bombings. "People were ripping up their shirts, pulling off their belts and trying to find anything to help stop the bleeding. It wasn't a hard decision'' to make the devices available to the department.

Since then, Philadelphia has issued more than 5,000 tourniquets to its officers and created a corps of up to 100 "Tactical Emergency Combat Care'' officers who are being trained in more advanced medical triage to respond to local mass-casualty events, Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan said.

Dallas police Lt. Alex Eastman said 3,700 tourniquets were issued to patrol officers in November. And Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy said his department also is planning to adopt the tourniquet program, a strategy that has the endorsement of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, a coalition of the nation's largest law enforcement agencies.

"It makes sense because police are often the first to arrive at these scenes where there is an immediate need,'' Davis said.

While the Boston tragedy served to accelerate the new equipment distribution, the series of mass-casualty shootings - especially the 2012 Connecticut elementary school massacre - started an examination last March of crisis response led by the American College of Surgeons, the FBI, the Major Cities Chiefs Association and other groups.

That review resulted in a July publication known as the Hartford Consensus, named for the groups' initial meeting location, that offered strategies for how best to increase victims' survivability in mass-casualty events, emphasizing hemorrhage control and the application of tourniquets by first-responding officers.

"I've been pushing for this for years,'' said Eastman, who also serves as Parkland Memorial Hospital's trauma surgery chief. "But I think it was the Boston experience that pushed people to act.''

Since Boston and the written guidance produced from the Hartford meeting, Eastman estimates that as many as 40,000 police officers have either been provided tourniquets or will be soon.

"Police departments shouldn't be considering doing this, it should be mandatory,'' Eastman said. "The tourniquet makes a law enforcement officer every bit as effective as a trauma surgeon outside the hospital.''

While tourniquets are now mandatory equipment for all officers, smaller groups of officers are volunteering for special training to assist in such things as treating gunshot victims with open chest wounds and other injuries. Like quasi-combat medics, they will be scattered throughout the city for dispatch when needed.

"We're learning that people need definitive action in minutes or people die,'' Sullivan said.

He said the tourniquet program, launched at cost of about $30 per kit, has "already paid for itself'' by contributing to life-saving treatment for three people, including a local pizza delivery man who was recently shot in the leg.

"It's all about lessons learned,'' Sullivan said. "We have got to make sure that something positive comes from these horrendous experiences like Boston. We have to make sure that we're ready if something happens here.''